How it started
Newspaper interests
The history of the companies that made up UBM stretches back almost two hundred years. Up until its acquisition UBM businesses published many titles that were launched in the 19th century, including Building magazine, launched in 1843 by Joseph Hansom, as well as Chemist & Druggist.
The company was founded in 1918 as United Newspapers by David Lloyd George to acquire the Daily Chronicle and Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper. In 1929, the company merged with Provincial Newspapers, an owner of regional papers in the north; the next year, it sold its national papers. The company continued for decades as a regional newspaper publisher, making acquisitions such as Yorkshire Post Newspapers in 1969.
It acquired PR Newswire in 1982. In 1985, it bought Express Newspapers and continued to publish the Daily Express for some 15 years. Also in 1985, it bought US trade magazine and book publisher Miller Freeman. It changed its name to United News & Media in 1995, sold its regional papers in 1998, and bought CMP Media, a technology-focused trade media company, in 1999 for $920 million. In 2000, it sold the Daily Express to Richard Desmond, sold most of Miller Freeman to VNU and Reed Elsevier and adopted the name of United Business Media. United Business Media acquired the trade publisher Aprovia UK (owner of The Builder) in 2003 and the medical publishing company MediMedia in 2004.
Television interests
MAI was part of a consortium that bid for the ITV south and south east area, which formed Meridian Broadcasting in 1991. MAI began to expand following the successful launch of Meridian: in 1994 the company bought Anglia Television, the ITV franchise for the east of England, and the following year became a major shareholder in the consortium that won the franchise for Channel 5. In 1996, MAI merged with United Newspapers (via an agreed takeover by United) to form United News & Media (UNM). The resulting company owned the Daily Express newspaper, Meridian, Anglia, and a large shareholding (through the Yorkshire Post) in Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television, the owners of Yorkshire Television and Tyne Tees Television. The stake in Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television was sold to Granada, allowing them to take control of the two franchises in 1997. In November 1997 UBM also launched the now defunct satellite TV Channel Rapture TV which focussed on dance music and extreme sports. The channel was put up for sale in 2001, and was eventually brought by Edinburgh-based company Power TV a year later, in April 2002.
From Wikipedia’s article on UBM Information Ltd., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3